Seriously? 2.79 mbps? That's snail pace! Mine is 120 mbps. Who are you with? That sounds like it could be your problem. :yikes:

AT&T... I think?

It's my landlord's internet. He shares it between me, my two roommates, and his kids.

Yeh, sounds like your internet is super slow and overloaded with users.

OR

You can ask him to call AT&T, last time I had internet trouble my landlord called the company and they came out and did something with the outside lines free of charge. Could be an external issue. At the very least, they could verify everything is setup properly and working as intended.

my windows 8 wifi constantly drops.
I've switched all the power settings. I have a ratlink adapter(can specify if needed)
Any idea's?

The driver is updated.

I've been having that issue a lot lately too, I thought it was the dorms wifi that was the issue though. Maybe we watched the same porn video.

Is that wireless? I know that a physical connection always works better than wireless, so if yes, have you tried an ethernet connection? My own broadband was always dropping till I changed to an ethernet connection, now it rarely if ever does.

Other than that, call your provider.

HAve you done any Windows updates recently?

Mine updates automatically, about two weeks ago was the last time. I'm gonna go with TH's Ethernet suggestion, I found a plug for it in my room that I didn't know was there.

probably, you can't tell these days.

Anybody remember the glory days of XP when you wouldn't update because it inevitably would make your computer ****tier.

Not much has changed except your forced to update now.

I read I could change the wireless channel on my network card but am unsure how to.

Ethernet is an option but I paid for a network card and want my ****ing network card to work.

Anybody know any terminal commands I can punch in or something? The user setttings on windows 8 must be aesthetic because they don't actually do anything.

Your wireless network card doesn't control the channel. That would be your wireless router, which is usually set to "auto". Basically, you have a handful of channels that the radio signal broadcasts out on that are spaced apart in the frequency spectrum enough to mitigate certain types of interference. Setting a wireless router or access point to a specific channel is usually done when there are many access points in a close range, so they're set in such a way as they don't overlap at distances where the gain is high enough to cause interference.

I assume you're saying "network card" but meaning "wireless router"? If so, that's fine. WiFi is good because it allows you to be mobile. It makes sense using it on a Laptop or some other portable device. But if it's a desktop or computer that doesn't move, you're better off using the Ethernet adapter because you get higher speeds and no interference. But if you'd like to stay with being wireless, I would first troubleshoot in such a way as to pinpoint *where* the issue likely is.

To do that, you should first rule out the wireless router having interference issues. If other wireless devices on the network are having no issues at the same time your computer IS, then it's probably not the router. Second, I would do that test where all the devices are in the same physical location and not moving. If it's only your computer dropping, it's definitely not interference nor is it a problem with the router.

If you can get yourself to that point, you have then narrowed down where you should start focusing. Your computer. At that point, it's usually best to work from layer 7 up, (physical layer all the way up to application layer), but I doubt you have a spare external wifi card lying around that you can just up and install. Which is sad, because with the exception of drivers, it's usually physical with these sorts of issues.

Because of that, you probably shouldn't rule out a hardware problem. If you've got all the latest drivers for it, the correct ones, and went through any settings you might know about, checked for malware and all that, then it's going to be a wild goose chase. Because there's still the big hardware problem unknown. Until something ends up working.

However, there's one thing you should check first. Event Viewer. I don't know how to get to it on 8 because I've never used it, but if you Google the location of Event Viewer, you should be able to locate it. Once you do, there should be a section called "custom views", under which there should be "administrative events". Click on that and let the window refresh. This is going to be an aggregate of all errors. Click through them at times correlating with your issue until you see something relevant and Google it.

Good luck.

Here is what I was going off of:
However my ratlink card doesn't have wireless mode under advanced.



It is only my laptop. However the issues only occurs at home.
For example, at school I have no issues.

I'll do the rest of your advice for sure. Thanks--it is curious how it is only this connection at home whereas everything else connects fine. My ps4, wii, my roomates computers, etc all connect fine.

Would it help if I told you the router/provider?

It's comcast i can let you know the router if that would help

Well, the physical wireless network adapter on your PC is generally going to be able to operate on multiple modes. b/g/n is typical these days. It will automatically do whichever the wireless access point or router is broadcasting on, which is probably also b/g/n. There should be no need to change it unless there's a driver issue at play. The fact that you can't get to such a setting on your PC is kinda weird. Do you have some sort of external wireless adapter for your PC? I've never heard of Ratlink. Are you referring to Ralink?

Yeah it's ralink.

It's not external.

It just drops randomly with no pattern.

How old is the computer? Did the problem occur out of nowhere? What do you mean specifically by "drop"? Have you checked the event log?

The computer is less than 1 year old I believe.
The problem began when I moved to a new apt, new wifi service.
By "drop" i mean the connection becomes limited and internet functionality ceases.
I don't know how to navigate, or I should say, what/where to look in the event log.

Thanks Freebase, I appreciate your continued help

For Sparky:
It could be similar to this:

Is it possible to disable the Windows Zero Configuration? - Microsoft Community

Just out of curiosity is there a standard length where an ethernet cable starts to lose the signal? I'm looking to run about 100' from where the modem has to sit to where my desktop is so I can maintain a stronger connection. Is it worth it, or should I just look at getting a PCI wifi adapter?

It depends on the type of cable. Running a Cat5 cable will give you a more stable connection rather than wifi, but my knowledge on length is a bit limited. Here's some good reading though:

LAN cable: how long is "too long"? - Routers - Networking

For a while my cable ran from my PC in my bedroom down to my router in the hall. It's not 100 feet (not sure how long most stairs are, but I think that's a long way is it not?) but I think about forty maybe? Anyway the connection was strong. As long as you use one single piece of cable, ie get an ethernet cable equivalent to the distance between your PC and the router. In other words, no adaptors, connectors, stitching pieces together. Once the end that goes into your router and the end that goes into your PC are both on the same original piece of cable I think you should be ok.

It's always preferable to use an ethernet, even if the modem and PC are both in the same room, as Wireless is less reliable, I've been told. Ether tends to drop very seldom if at all, whereas with Wireless it can happen quite a lot.

That's my experience anyway.

328 feet / 100 meters before you should be inserting a repeater, so you should be fine.

If you got a new wireless router, there might be some settings in there that are relevant to your ralink wireless card. Generally, wireless cards in a computer are going to operate on standards like b/g/n or what have you, and in your wireless router, you may need to ensure that it's set up to work with the mode your PC's wireless card is operating on. If you give me the make and model of the wireless router, I can look at the manual and see what might be relevant for you to look into. Surely, the difference between all your devices could very well be the type of wireless card in them and how the wireless router is set up, especially if the issue began after getting a new router.

For the event viewer, if you can open it up, in the left panel you should see "Custom Views". Double click that, then in the middle panel you should see "Administrative Events". Double click that and let all the events load. You may see a bunch of Warnings and Errors. That's what you're looking for. Minimize the Event Viewer and start surfing around doing what you'd normally do and when the wireless connection drops, bring the Event Viewer back up and click "Refresh" on the right-hand pane. This will refresh the middle pane with all the events. If there are new events at the time your dropout happened, they're likely to be relevant. Copy + paste the text from the "General" tab for the events and we can get a better idea of what's happening, assuming the events turn out to be useful.

I followed the instructions on there and disabled WLAN autoconfig without much idea of what I'm doing. When I disable it my internet stops as well however.

My services does not have "WZC" which was the other thing I could mess with.

I'm considering going back to ubuntu. It's probably comparable in its intuitiveness by now.

Awesome. I got it up and will be sure to post whatever it records during the next drop.

My router is an xfinity arris tg 8626/ct

Here's a picture of the relevant setting in the router I was talking about:

http://setuprouter.com/router/arris/...1879-large.jpg

Look the same?

yes accept I have a MAC address instead of protocols

wat

What options do you see if you click Edit?

hold on it just did it

on the event log a box originally came up saying "windows cannot find the file specified"

here is the error message(?): As for your question
the options are:
network name
mode
security mode
channel selection
network password
show network password
broadcast network name

also my connection stayed disconnected this time(never happened before) so i had to plug in my Ethernet.

do you have gmail?
want to gchat this?

Try method one and two:

Event ID 1014: Microsoft Windows DNS Client - TechNet Articles - United States (English) - TechNet Wiki

ok, it omits windows 8 under what operating systems it applies to.

Do it anyway?

Yea.

But wait... I was reading in the other methods and since you said that you see a MAC address in the protocols section of the router, I'm just curious as to what you see in the "Mode" option.

Can you tell me?

After that, if it's already b/g/n, then do the first two methods in the link.

security mode:
wpa/wpa2
mode:802.11g/n

change it to bgn?

Yea. Your wireless card might be trying to use B.

Also, when you get a chance, go to your ipv4 properties and set your DNS servers statically to the below: (openDNS addresses, versus your ISP's, just in case their DNS servers are ****ting the bed)

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

Leave the IP address top part to automatically obtain.

alright will do after I do the stuff on the link

ok I am having a problem at this part
Do i need to put my computer name where it says local machine or something?

No, there's a hive called that in the registry. However, if you don't want to do the registry part right now, we can see if the other settings work out.
If you run regedit, HKLM is the third hive down. Still, it's kinda risky. So if you want to wait, you can move on and save that for last should nothing else work.

alright lets do that.

Method #2 on the link asks me to click "manage network connections" which is seemingly none existent in windows 8. I can uncheck internet protocol version 6 or 4 in any connection. This all seems contingent on step 1 working however.

alright Im gonna do ipv4 properties now

alright i put the dns in

Basically, if you can get to network and sharing center, if that still exists in 8, there should be some area saying "change adapter settings" or something to that effect. If you click that, you should be taken to an area that shows your local area connection, your wireless connection, bluetooth if you have that enabled, etc. If you right click on the wireless connection and choose "properties", you'll have a box that pops up where you can untick IPv6.

Edit: Just realized you said you can uncheck. Just uncheck. You're at the right place, as there's only one place.